Global Warming Hysteria holds that we should destroy our national sovereignty by handing over our economies to an international, unaccountable technocracy run by the pathetically hapless UN, as we redistribute wealth from the West to pay destitute countries to stay destitute. (See the craziness that was Copenhagen.) We are to do this because “the scientists” have used their computer model crystal balls to see that warming will bring the End of Days if we don’t collapse our carbon release–a remedy that won’t take hold, even if it works, until long after most of us are dead–unless the Singularity brings about a corporeal New Jerusalem. As Al Gore bellows, that warming is “the most serious challenge that our civilization has ever faced!”
The problem is that some of the predictions hysterics have made that could be judged in our own times, have not come to pass, such as the one that UK children by now would barely know what snow is. Another is that the arctic ice will have melted by now. Over at Forbes, skeptic James Taylor is on the case. From “Polar Ice Rapture Misses Its Deadline:”
This week, a 1979 Palm Beach Post article resurfaced in which Steven Schneider, who for the past 30 years was one of the most prominent global warming alarmists, claimed the west Antarctic ice sheet could melt before the year 2000 and inundate American coastlines with up to 25 feet of sea level rise. Obviously, the west Antarctic ice sheet was not raptured away last century, and New Yorkers can still drive rather than swim to work.
If Steven Schneider was the only alarmist making spectacular – and spectacularly wrong – predictions about global warming and polar ice melt, then perhaps we could simply write it off as a single person who walked a little too far off the deep end. But spectacularly wrong global warming predictions, about polar ice and many other global warming-related issues, is par for the course for global warming alarmists.
Mark Serreze, a researcher with the federally funded National Snow and Ice Data Center, frightened the masses in June 2008 by claiming there was a 50-50 chance the North Pole would be ice-free in the upcoming summer. The media reported Serreze’s prediction with a frenzy rarely equaled even among media-created global warming scares. Adding fuel to the fire, global warming alarmists lined up in droves to add their John Hancock to Serreze’s claim. Many prominent alarmists even claimed Serreze was too conservative with his prediction. For example, Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at England’s Cambridge University, told the June 27, 2008, London Independent, “People are expecting this [Arctic ice melt] to continue this year and it is likely to extend over the North Pole. It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer – it’s not happened before.”
The snows are even returning to Kilimanjaro, which Al Gore wrongly claimed was losing its famous snow due to warming. Some Himilayan glaciers–you know, the ones that the IPCC once said would be gone by 2035–are actually growing. Oh, and the polar bear population is stable despite the ridiculous listing of them by our GHW bureaucrats as “threatened.”
In the face of these and other miscues, GWH’s now desperately seize at any severe weather event as proof of global warming. No snow? Warming! A lot of snow? WARMING! Flood? WARMING! Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes–WARMING! WARMING! WARMING! WARMING! And the ever compliant media dance to the tune, as in this Toles cartoon.
But the horrible tornadoes we are now experiencing aren’t caused by warming. They are not unprecedented. They are merely extreme weather that afflicts the country periodically, made more dangerous because of the growth of urbanization in Tornado Alley.
In fact, computer models suggest that warming would lead to fewer tornadoes. Ah, a way out! It’s another bad prediction by the GWHs, but one that proves global warming!
May 26th, 2011 | 3:22 pm
Wesley, you and your readers should click through the link you provided at the word “resurfaced” and read the actual Palm Beach Post article, rather than Taylor’s misleading commentary on it. In the article, Schneider is quoted as saying that the Antarctic melt could occur within the next century–that is, by 2079. He is also quoted as saying that the “initiation” of the melt could not be ruled out before the “end of this century,” i.e., 2000. He didn’t say the melt would end before 2000, but that it would begin. And ice coverage in the Arctic has in fact been trending down since well before 2000. Taylor is misreading the article, and now you’ve passed it on for others to misread, as well. Please go read the article, and notice the wording of the first and fifth paragraphs.
May 26th, 2011 | 5:50 pm
Yes, yes, you just misread.
The Earth is going to melt any day – or maybe a hundred years from now.
You know, if there is such a thing as man made global warming, then maybe the scientific community should shut up and get busy finding a fix. They’re the ones who created everything that caused the problem, so if they want to redeem themselves from the trouble they’ve caused, finding a cure would be a good start.
May 27th, 2011 | 4:53 am
The arctic sea ice is still there- the melting season started about 2 months ago.
In September 2007, it was 40% diminished from 1979-2000 average, in late summer.
2010 was another large melt off. Yes Ice should remain in the arctic in winter for now- but it could be gone by late summer in just a few years.
The IPCC erred in 2007, when it said arctic sea ice could be totally melted by 2050 in late summer. At this point by 2050, it might be gone for more then half the year it 4 decades, and be gone in late summer as early as 2012.
May 27th, 2011 | 5:11 am
The Thousands of Nameless Consensus Climate Scientists and Al Gore, lazy copy and paste news editors and politicians promising to lower the seas and make the weather colder by taxing the air, are my shepherds; I shall not think.
They maketh me lie down in Greenzi pastures:
They leadeth me beside the still-freezing waters.
They selleth my soul for the Thousands of Nameless Consensus Climate Scientists and Al Gore, lazy copy and paste news editors and politicians promising to lower the seas and make the weather colder by taxing the air, and condemn my children to a death by CO2 for not turning the G.D. lights off more often.
They leadeth me in the paths of self-righteousness for their own sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of reason,
I will fear no logic: for they art with me and thinking for me;
The Thousands of Nameless Consensus Climate Scientists quest to study the effects of something that hasn’t happened instead of the causes of something that hasn‘t happened, well, they comfort me.
They preparest a PR and mainscream media campaign and call it peer reviewed, in the presence of contradictory evidence.
They anointest mine head with nonsense; my fear runneth over.
Surely blind faith and hysteria shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Thousands of Nameless Consensus Climate Scientists and Al Gore, lazy copy and paste news editors and politicians making it look like they are doing something for us forever.
May 27th, 2011 | 6:29 am
Unfortunately, they have come up with a “cure.” However, it is one which guarantees economic deprivation for, literally, billions of people. All for the sake of a problem which is probably not a problem at all. It would be grossly immoral to pursue such a “cure”, given our current lingering ignorance.
We skeptics are not “deniers.” We can read a thermometer, and don’t deny any real change which has already happened. What we do reject is overreacting to theoretical future problems, such as impoverishing the world’s population when we have time to study the matter and resolve the very real scientific puzzles which still exist regarding our climate’s future.
One hapless GWH blog commenter asserted that the North Pole was melting. I gladly assured her that no indeed, it was still standing tall and erect, with its red and white spiral stripes still as vivid as ever!
May 27th, 2011 | 6:55 am
Arctic ice melt is not unusual; it happened in 1922, well before the great increase in anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
There are other explanations for ice melt, and the way the ice is melting does not fit with AGW theory.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/rumors-of-the-death-of-arctic-sea-ice-greatly-exaggerated/
May 29th, 2011 | 11:48 am
Wesley, how much does the oil lobby pay you for all the lies you put about?
July 12th, 2011 | 2:19 pm
All the rhetoric over global warming will be answered with a catastrophic failure of a glacial plug on Greenland letting go and all that fresh water dumped into the Arctic. A nuclear winter will ensue in Europe the likes that hasn’t been seen in 170 years and big oil will say “How did that happen?” I just hope it doesn’t happen in my lifetime.
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